Lure of Song and Magic (20 page)

“Someone grabbed her from the side of the road?” Oz suggested as Pippa read the dates on the articles Conan had summoned. “Maybe the guys in the semi came back to make certain they'd done the deed, saw her, and didn't want any evidence wandering around.”

“And she probably screamed them into letting her out a few hours down the road,” Gloria said wryly. “If we could find the Librarian, we might find some answers. I don't suppose you have any magic for conjuring the invisible?” Gloria asked wistfully.

Pippa watched with suspicion as Oz's lanky brother grinned. Conan was almost as good-looking as Oz, in a more angular way, but his robot mind robbed him of Oz's personality. On Conan, a grin seemed ominous.

“I've planted my own bug in their dirty little cloud,” he announced. “They're transmitting from a server in Utah. The feds are circling as we speak.”

Finally, good news! Pippa tried not to get too excited, but locating the Librarian seemed essential. “Then the Librarian can lead us to Donal.”

Oz looked skeptical. Pippa caught his hand, and he squeezed her fingers. To her surprise, he was the one who responded, not his attention-grabbing brother.

“The server is just a host,” Oz explained. “The Librarian could be in China. Probably is, or Conan would be collaring her now. All the feds can do is check the server's records and try to trace the customers using their facilities. Even if Adam Technology owns it, they can't be blamed for what their clients are doing.”

With despair, Pippa verified his explanation by the smile disappearing from Conan's face. His expression was grim. She cuddled her poor stuffed seal.

“It's only a start,” Conan agreed. “The feds can trace the satellite and work from there, but most of these virus-wielding creeps are out of our reach. We can shut down their access to the server, but they pop up again somewhere else. We call it whack-a-mole.”

“I really think the Librarian is trying to help us,” Gloria insisted. “I'd rather you not do anything to cause her harm. She's the only connection we have.”

“She may be our mole in the enemy camp,” Pippa suggested. “If there is an enemy.”

Oz seized on her suggestion, turning to his brother. “Can you get a message to the Librarian through your bug?”

Conan nodded warily. “Possibly. Since we have no idea what we're working with, it would have to be innocuous if we're trying not to endanger her or Donal.”

Pippa didn't like the satisfied look on Oz's face before he spoke.

“Tell her we'll have a live audience for Pippa's first rehearsal in a week, as soon as we find a location.”

Chapter 26

Pippa grabbed her gray bundle of seal-shaped fur, stalked through the back garden gate, and slammed out of the pool enclosure.

“Where's she going?” Conan asked from the lounge chair he'd returned to after Oz's announcement that rehearsals were scheduled.

“To her studio, to keep from throwing me into the pool.” Oz supposed he was lucky they had progressed from physical combat to the silent treatment. But if Pippa was still afraid he'd drive off a cliff if she yelled at him, he understood her silence. What he didn't understand was why she was angry.

The damned woman
knew
what they had to do. She couldn't still be objecting to singing one silly song. “I probably ought to carry the computer down to her.” Oz stood, heading toward the house.

“I wouldn't, if I were you,” Gloria said placidly. “She never liked being told what to do. You played that badly.”

“I shouldn't have to play her at all!” Oz objected.

“You're bullying her, not leaving her any choice. Did you ask what she thought?” Gloria's placid tone took on an edge reminiscent of her daughter's.

“It's not all about you, my lad,” Conan agreed mockingly.

Oz grabbed the back of his brother's lounge chair and lifted. Cushion and Conan slid straight into the pool.

Conan popped back up, flinging his soaked hair off his brow and grinning. “It's warm in here. I think I'll stay awhile.”

Flipping off the pool heater switch to cool off his know-it-all brother, Oz took the path around the house toward the day care parking lot. He didn't have to deal with a woman who drove his protective instincts into overdrive while his mind was crazed with worry about Donal. Conan had obviously retrieved Pippa's music from her computer. They could broadcast the stupid seal song if they wanted. Not that he could figure out how that would lure Donal from his kidnappers—not any more than he knew how Pippa could.

He just wanted to fix things,
now
.

And he couldn't. He couldn't do anything. He'd been helpless for a year, and just when he thought he might have a handle on things—

Damn. He still had nothing. He'd simply added Pippa to his mucked-up head—and he couldn't do shit about anything.

They were politely sitting around pools, discussing inanities, when his boy could be suffering. He needed to punch someone. Maybe he needed to let Pippa scream for him. Even a scream that shattered tall towers wouldn't be sufficient for his current rage.

He strode into town, looking for his set designers. Or trouble, whichever came first. If Pippa wasn't going to cooperate, he had no good reason to keep his crew up here. They could all go back to L.A. and their air-conditioned offices and decent restaurants. He could film at a real studio.

He'd thought Pippa understood the urgency of the situation. How could she hold out now, after hearing her mother's horror stories? After Conan had proved her songs hurt no one?

Except—Oz had seen her sing a drunk to sleep. And lure a little boy from the desert. Improbable, but he wanted to believe she was magic and could save Donal too. He wanted to believe there was something mystical about that stupid song.

He was grabbing at straws, and that frustrated him even more.

What few shops existed along the main drag were closed on Sunday. Oz strode down the street, still simmering. It was past noon, and the café was humming with after-church customers. Maybe the tavern wouldn't be busy. Chet and Jake were more likely to go for a beer than join the Sunday crowd.

“First customer of the day!” Lizzy called cheerily as Oz entered the dingy Blue Bayou.

Except it wasn't quite as dreary as it had been the other night. He glanced around, trying to pinpoint the difference. The black curtains were gone, and sunlight streamed across the scarred wooden floor and tables. Not necessarily an improvement but a more cheerful aspect, at least.

“Pizza?” she asked, when he simply stood there, wondering why he was there. “I've got a new menu!”

With nowhere better to go, he took a seat at the counter and glanced at her new menu. She'd printed it on fake antique vellum. The formatting left a lot to be desired, but it was a menu. He pointed at the pizza with the most meat on it. “I'll try this one. How's business?”

As if he couldn't tell. He turned the stool around and leaned against the counter. The window had been washed until it gleamed. The floors didn't have enough wax to sparkle, but they were peanut-shell free. Someone had put a lot of work and hope into a crappy hole-in-the-wall.

He was supposed to be bringing customers up here. Lizzy—and a lot of other people—were pinning their expectations on him. And Pippa.

It wasn't all about him. He hated it when his brothers were right.

“Business isn't bad,” Lizzy said tentatively after calling the order to someone in the kitchen. “When are your people showing up?”

Never
, was his ornery response. But he kept his anger to himself, unlike a certain redhead who let her displeasure be known with slamming doors and gates. Why in hell should he listen to her if she never listened to him?

“Director will be here tomorrow,” he said noncommittally.

“Pippa is freezing up, isn't she?” Lizzy said, grasping his problem with surprising insight. “She hates being in the spotlight. She'd be great in our little theater, but she won't even come in and watch.”

“If you know her that well, then you know she has her reasons,” he said grumpily.

“Introverts don't like attention,” Lizzy concurred, polishing the bar.

So even Pippa's best friend didn't know who she really was. How could she possibly hope to hide her identity and still help the town?

She
hadn't expected to have to live up to her part of the bargain.
She hadn't believed he would follow through on his promise to find her family. She'd meant to bow out and leave him with the books and the production and no star. He'd known that going in. He hadn't known the depth of her problem then. He still didn't grasp the whole of it, but he understood better.

Pippa really didn't want her face on television. Chances were excellent that even if he didn't use her stage name, some media bozo somewhere would recognize Syrene all grown up. Oz couldn't make any promises to the contrary. He couldn't even be certain he wouldn't use her stage name if that would get Donal back.

“Can I get you a beer?”

“Yeah, whatever's on draft.” A strong one, if he had to sit here and muddle out where he was going with Pippa. He'd starve and go thirsty if he wanted any kind of relationship with a vegetarian opposed to alcohol.

Did he want a relationship with a temperamental, neurotic former child star?

A week ago, he would have said
hell, no
.

Right now, he didn't know what he wanted, except to punch someone or something. He glared at a tilting wooden booth and wondered if he could hammer it into place with his fists.

Lizzy pushed a frosty glass across the bar. “Want me to talk to her? Her heart is in the right place. She wants to help. But I think someone hurt her badly, and now she's afraid to come out of her shell.”

A whole lot of someones had hurt her from what he could tell. And Pippa still fought back like a wildcat. He'd known that too. But after a few nights of great sex, he'd thought he'd tamed her. He was an idiot.

He didn't want her tamed. He wanted to unleash her on the world as she was—brilliant, captivating, talented, and moody as a bitch. He could live with that. Pippa would never in a thousand years sneak around behind his back, steal his son, and run off to Mexico.

She was far more likely to hire the county police force, buy AK-47s, and go after the bastards on her own, without consulting him. Oz almost grinned at that.

There was his problem. Pippa didn't play well with others.

And they had opposing views on a shitload of things, but he was the negotiator. He just had to remember that she wasn't Alys. Alys had been weak and had never really accepted him as more than an ATM. She'd had her friends. He'd had his. There had been no connection on which to build trust.

He figured he could trust Pippa, but he couldn't ignore her as he had Alys, or she'd hit him upside the head. That would take some getting used to.

“Give me a hammer,” he said.

Looking at him oddly, Lizzy opened a toolbox under the counter and did as told.

Setting his lips in satisfaction, Oz pounded the tilting booth back into place and looked around for more things to smack.

***

Without all the background music from her computer, Pippa could do no more than scream into the microphone, unleashing the Beast in all its fury.

Except this time, singing couldn't help.

Her
mother
was sitting by the pool, alone. Who knew what Conan was doing? And Oz… She strangled the wire and shrieked into the microphone until even Mars ought to hear her.

The damned man needed a golf club taken to his head. Or a baseball bat. How could he possibly expect Syrene to go on stage?

He
knew
what she could do with her Voice. He'd seen it for himself, even if he couldn't hear it. Did she need to make his crew crawl before he'd acknowledge that she really was dangerous?

How could he even think that it was safe to set her before an entire audience in some vague hope she might possibly be heard by his son, somehow, someway? It was ridiculous. Why didn't he just set a bomb in the road and see if it found Donal?

Why should she risk everything and everyone in a futile endeavor?

She knew why, but she couldn't admit it, so she screamed into the microphone until her voice was raw.

Her familiar—safe—routines were gone forever. She had a mother. And responsibilities. And “Fail” signs blinked everywhere she walked.

Dropping to the floor after half an hour of gyrating to her own music, sweat pouring from her forehead, Pippa sipped cold water from her cooler and tried to find a center of peace, but she was still off-kilter.

Shit. She held the cold bottle to her forehead to cool off.

She'd sung in concert with the best voices of her time when she was twelve. She'd filmed her first video at thirteen. She'd been on television at fourteen and touring at fifteen. She'd traveled the world.

Surely she could do one small television show without killing anyone. Except maybe Oz. After all, she didn't have to
marry
him. So maybe she wouldn't drive him over a cliff. Just drive him to drugs. Like Robbie.

With a sigh at her own fatalism, Pippa finished off her water, threw the bottle in the recycle container, and stretched.

Oz had found her mother. The miracle had scarcely begun to sink in. She had a real
family
.

She would be an unforgivable bitch if she didn't help the man who had found her family.

She might be a murderous one if she lost control. So she couldn't afford to lose control. For an extended period of time, exposed to multitudes of strangers, she had to resist stress and find perfect inner peace.

He might as well ask her to solve world hunger.

***

Bearing pizzas as a peace offering, Oz returned to Pippa's house to find a local furniture delivery truck parked in the lot. Wondering who made deliveries on a Sunday and why, he warily strolled down the path, looking for explanations.

A muscular man with a clipboard emerged from the courtyard, nodded, and hiked back up the trail as Oz entered.

Inside the house, he nearly stumbled over a desk that hadn't been in the front room before. An unplugged computer sat beside it. Voices traveled from the bedroom hall.

Oz knew he wasn't going to like this. Setting the pizzas on the table, he shoved his hands into his pockets and wandered back to the bedrooms as if he belonged here.

He wanted to belong here. Like Ronan the Lonely Seal, he was searching for a home. That thought ought to jolt him, but he'd had enough jolting for one day.

Hands in pockets, he stopped at the first door in the hall, the room that had once been Pippa's business office. The shelves of books were still there, but now, instead of a desk and computer, she'd set up a brand new bed and mattress.

He was pretty certain they weren't for him.

The women were making the bed. They looked up when his shadow fell across them.

“My mother is moving in with me,” Pippa said, almost defiantly.

He couldn't very well say,
What
about
me?
He was pretty certain she was throwing up a wall between them. But he couldn't argue that she needed to know her mother and that leaving the injured woman at the B&B was cruel.

He had a place in L.A. to go to. Her mother didn't. Yeah, he got that.

“You think this is safe?” he asked, turning to Gloria, who looked a little overwhelmed.

“I have no idea what I've done by coming to this town,” Gloria admitted. “I really don't know if anyone cares if I exist anymore. The drug dealers are probably long since dead.”

Oz nodded. “I may have caused more problems by finding Pippa in the first place.” He turned to Pippa. “Should I call you Siren now?”

Her turquoise glare turned him on. Everything she damned well did turned him on. He wanted to drag her into the other bedroom and settle this in the only way they knew how.

“No, I don't think that's a good idea,” she said in response to his question about her name, but it was the right response to his thought about settling arguments in bed too. They needed to learn how to communicate.

“Are you staying at the B&B tonight or going back to L.A.?” she asked.

Good question. Excellent question. He'd thought he'd be staying here, with her. With the damned woman who had sucked him into her crazy psychedelic world and taught him to hope again.